It’s hard not to notice some echoes of the classic S-shape in the graph of craft beer market share. What would a diffusion model project for the next five to 10 years?

Good times returned to the U.S. beer industry in 2012, and great times continued for the vast majority of Americas 2,347 craft breweries.

Given the continuing economic doldrums and persistently high unemployment since 2009, it might be easy to start thinking of craft beer as “recession-proof.” But is it?

New breweries are popping up nationwide almost every week now. But the real news in this wave of recent growth may actually be that the “old breweries” are getting bigger.

During the late 1990s, when craft beer growth slowed to single digits, many breweries who branched out into distant territories now find that they overextended themselves.